Let's Digitise the Dawn

The National Library of Australia has brought life to a wonderful digitisation
project, Trove, making Australia's newspapers available online, and
harnessing the power of the crowd to assist in the massive effort of correcting
the auto-generated text of the scanned images.

This paper is about initiating and executing a campaign to see The Dawn,
Australia's first feminist journal, digitised and added to The Trove, sooner
rather than later. Louisa Lawson was a leader in Australia's sufragette
community, and her journal, The Dawn was an important voice for women
struggling not just for the vote, but for the right to work, equal pay, and
education. Her legacy is little appreciated, and she is sadly better known as
Henry Lawson's mother, than as a leader and pioneer of Australian
Democracy.

Using modern web tools, social media, and spreading the word through
networks of women, historians, geeks and genealogists the funds were raised
dollar by dollar. This paper shares the story, so that others may adopt the
strategy and help ensure other important elements of women's history can be
made more accessible, online.

Note: At the time of writing we have raised a third of our target amount - by
the time the conference rolls around, I hope to be able to announce full details
of the project's success.